The Liberated Bride (50 page)

A
LOCAL BEAUTY
welcomed them to the high-ceilinged second floor and politely but firmly made them take off their coats, for which there would be no room in the auditorium, and hang them in the checkroom. With the thrill of old intimacy Rivlin spied, beneath Hagit's fur-collared coat, her beloved blouse and velvet pants on Ra'uda's tall, dark figure. He tried to catch her eye, wishing to share his amusement at her simulacrum from the other side of the border. But Hagit, still involved with the translatoress, who was greatly distressed by her husband's coolness, had no time for her old clothes, which now vanished with their wearer in the wake of Samaher.

Rivlin let himself be carried along by the festive hubbub of the guests, most of them young people of unclear identity. It was hard to tell the Arabs from the Jews, or either of the two from anyone else. Taking Ibn-Zaidoun's advice, he headed for the buffet, followed by Suissa's widow with Suissa senior on her heels. The murdered scholar's father, awed by the occasion despite his vengeful feelings toward its Palestinian organizers, had taken off his fedora and put on a big, colorful skullcap that might have been knit back in his North African childhood. At the buffet, by plates of stuffed grape leaves and cigar-shaped meat pastries, the conversation flowed in Arabic, Hebrew, and English, with an occasional German exclamation mark. Holding a glass and surrounded by Israeli peace activists, the most famous of Palestinian poets stood by the auditorium door. An aging, though still boyish, bachelor and full-time exile who circulated among the world's capitals reading his poetry, he was trying to follow, a bored glitter in his eyes, the singsong English of an Israeli poet of his own generation, a tall, balding, protuberant man with thick glasses, who was known for his marvelously erotic sonnets—which, though politically naive, were said to embody his lust for peace. At his side, seeking to elbow his way into the conversation, was another poet from Tel Aviv—a literary critic as well, whose brilliant but nasty essays took advantage of the Middle East conflict to settle scores with his numerous rivals.

There was a tap on Rivlin's shoulder. It was Rashid, visibly excited. “Is everything all right, Professor?” he asked softly and disappeared before the Orientalist could answer, leaving Rivlin to smile sympathetically at the sad widow—who, a glass of water in her hand, regarded him with silent resentment, as if still waiting, even though he now was entrusted with five women, for the protection she demanded.

“It seems,” he said in a friendly whisper, trying to keep from being overheard by Suissa senior, who was cruising the counter in search of a kosher Middle Eastern hors d'oeuvre, “that you're getting used to your hedgehog.”

The young widow, giving him the cold shoulder, merely shook her head and set her glass down on the counter.

Hagit and Hannah stepped out of the ladies' room, smiling and
relaxed. Still more people were filing into the lobby, among them some country musicians in traditional costume who hurried to the auditorium with their instruments. Rivlin, his inhibitions dispelled by the noisy crowd, put two fingers to his mouth and startled those around him by shrilling his and Hagit's old whistle of recognition. At once came the judge's soft answering call. Spotting him, she linked arms with Hannah and headed in his direction. It pleased yet saddened him to see that although the two were the same age his wife looked much younger than her companion, who had been kept childless by a husband fearing rivals for her love.

“What happened to your driver?” Hannah chided him. “Don't forget that you've left your old teacher all alone. I only came because you promised I could be brought back any time I wanted.”

“Any time after Rashid's performance.”

“What performance is that?”

Rivlin smiled mysteriously. “You'll see. He's a demon in disguise, not just a driver.”

Ibn-Zaidoun, accompanied by two policemen serving as ushers, now opened the doors of the auditorium and began shooing the audience inside. From within came the sounds of a shepherd's pipe and a three-stringed rebab. At the doorway they were blocked by a conversation, started by the remark of an Israeli that according to the latest studies Jews and Palestinians had the same DNA. Although this had occasioned much laughter, it was hard to tell whether the laughter was approving or embarrassed.

“We all come from the same monkey's ass,” the erotic poet guffawed. “And should go back there.”

The Palestinian poet grinned provocatively. “I trust that's one place where the Law of Return applies equally.”

“Please, no politics tonight! Just love,” Ibn-Zaidoun warned through the gap between his front teeth. Rivlin was startled to see a shiny pistol protruding from his old leather coat.

“
They say there is love in this world,
” quoted the Palestinian poet—who, like Ra'uda, knew his Bialik. “
But I ask: What is love?
”

He entered the auditorium.

On the spur of the moment, Rivlin decided to introduce himself
and his companions to the poet, which he did while praising his verse, read by him in the original. The world-famous exile, his slim figure neat in a custom-made suit and a last cigarette butt between his yellowed fingers, listened to the Jewish Orientalist politely. He beamed when told of the accomplishments of the translatoress of Ignorance. “
Na'am, ya sitti,
” he said with an intense handshake, “el-
jahaliya mish bas asas esh-shi'ir el-arabi, hiyya kaman asas el-kiyan.
”
^*

T
HE AUDITORIUM OF THE
Khalil el-Sakakini Cultural Center was designed in the best modern taste, with unadorned white walls and columns bearing a vaulted ceiling of white arches graceful as the wings of a dove. Although it was so crowded that the Haifa professor and his entourage at first had nowhere to sit, Ibn-Zaidoun soon appeared, made some young Palestinians move to the floor, and gave the Jewish VIPs their seats. These looked down on a stage covered with a checked carpet, on which stood a long wooden table and three chairs. The musicians, seated in the back, were tuning their instruments while sipping little cups of coffee.

More and more young people kept pushing into the auditorium and finding places on the floor. The warmth of so many bodies made the heated hall stuffy, and a gray-haired Arab in jeans went to a window, drew its white lace curtain, and let in some cool night air. It took Rivlin a startled moment to realize it was Fu'ad. The maître d' had taken off his black uniform and come to search for poetic inspiration among his compatriots across the border.

The first strains of hesitant melody, still lacking the firm beat of a drum, were forming from the random notes of zither, shepherd's pipe, lute, and rebab. Ibn-Zaidoun, standing by the table, signaled the ushers to dim the lights. The melody stopped, and the audience was asked to rise for a moment of silence in memory of the great Palestinian educator after whom the new Cultural Center had been named. Then all sat down again, and Ibn-Zaidoun pulled from a pocket of his
leather coat a Hebrew translation of a passage from es-Sakakini's journals, published under the title
This Is Me, Gentlemen.
The educator's first love letter to his future wife was read aloud:

My Sultana,

And so, like clouds scattered before the wind, my days in Jerusalem are over. Allow me to write you a last letter and to bid you farewell from a heart that has almost ceased to beat from so much love and that has melted away from so much suffering. I utter these words as though from the grave. Soon I will leave this city, with its people, houses, streets, and soil that I belong to, and in which I breathed love for the first time, for a place that will never be mine. How could it be when my heart is staying behind?

Yesterday I spent the day parting with people whose goodness and sterling qualities I will never forget for as long as I live. I thought this would be easy for me, because I had prepared myself for it ever since conceiving of my journey. But when the time came, I felt how bitter it was. All day my heart was in a turmoil. And even if I can part with friends and family, how can I part with you, Sultana? Every other parting is easy in comparison.

I will think of you, Sultana, each time the sun rises or sets; I will think of you when I come and go, rise and lie down, arrive and depart; I will think of you when I go to work; I will think of you when I am calm and free of worry, and when I am weary and exhausted.

To part with you is to part with comradeship, purity, light, and joy; it is to encounter loneliness and sorrow. The first man leaving Paradise was not more anguished than I am. You are my Paradise. You are my happiness. You are my pleasure in life, my soul's joy, my life itself. What must a man feel when he leaves his own life?

Think of me, Sultana, each time you enter the church to pray, or open your Bible; think of me when you are teaching your students, or taking them for a nature walk to our beloved rock; think of me when you are at home. Stand at your window, which faces mine, and say: “Fare thee well, Khalil.” Ah, I would fain look at that window, for perhaps I would see you there!

And when springtime comes with its fair flowers and you feel a breeze, that is my greeting to you—or glimpse a flower, that is my smile—or hear the song of birds, that is my voice speaking. Should you glance up at the sky
and see the sparkling stars, you have seen my eyes looking at you. If the moon peeps over the mountains and sends its silvery beams through the clouds—regard them, for perhaps I am seeing them too and our two gazes will meet.

Today I sat with my cousin Ya'akub, to whom I confessed: “I love Sultana, I adore her.” I did not tell him that I have revealed to you the secret of my love. He thinks I should do so before I depart. When will I receive a clear answer from you? Ah, Sultana, have pity and do not let me go with an anxious heart and a worried mind. The anguish of parting is enough.

Nazim Ibn-Zaidoun was now joined by the Palestinian beauty from the checkroom. Playing the role of Khalil es-Sakakini's beloved, she stood with a white rose in her long hair and declaimed the letter written by the thirty-year-old Palestinian in its original Arabic.

Rivlin cast a warm glance at his wife, who was listening with empathy to the words even though they were only sounds for her. The eyes of the translatoress were damp with tears behind their glasses.

“What did you think of the translation?” he whispered.

She shrugged disdainfully. “Who can't translate such simple Arabic?”

“Simple but beautiful,” he said.

She looked at him suspiciously, then nodded slowly and, annoyed, took off her glasses and wiped her eyes.

She was not the only one moved. Opening the festival, the simple but genuine love letter of the Palestinian educator—a revolutionary in his thoughts and a romantic in his feelings—sent a shiver through the audience and made it want more. As Es-Sakakini's last words faded and Ibn-Zaidoun signaled the musicians to strike up a sweetly plaintive tune, the first poets edged toward the stage for the contest.

The cleverly creative festival director, however, was not in any hurry. First he wished to build up the suspense, setting the bar for the young poets with classical, but still bold and lively, verse. He would begin with some eighth-century poems by “the curly-headed one,” as he was known, the great Abu-Nawwas, followed by excerpts from the ninth-century poet Al-Hallaj. Both men were rebels and possibly not even true Arabs, for they were born in Persia and lived and wrote in Baghdad, where Abu-Nawwas ended his life in a dungeon and
Al-Hallaj by losing his head. Their poems, Ibn-Zaidoun announced, ratcheting up the audience's expectations, would be read by the great Palestinian poet, who need not fear their competition in tonight's contest.

The poet recited the classic verse in a voice rusty from tobacco smoke. Hebrew translations, prepared in advance, were then read aloud by Ibn-Zaidoun, who appeared to consider himself knowledgeable on the sacred language of the Jews.

Uktubi In Katabti, Ya Maniyya

When you write, my precious one, I pray you,
Do so with an open heart and a frank spirit and your spit.
Make many mistakes and erase them all
With it. No fingers, please.
Wet the page with the sweetness
Of your lovely teeth.
Each time I read a line you have corrected,
I'll lick it with my tongue,
A kiss from afar,
Leaving me giddy and dazed!

Ya Sakiyyati

O you who made me drink the bitter cup
That made a pleasant life unbearable!
Before I bore love's yoke I was well thought of,
And she, the one I love, dwelt in king's chambers.
Then some evil-wisher waylaid me with love,
And heaped upon me shame and degradation.
Her scent is of the musk of sea-dwellers.
Her smile outshines the buds of chamomile.
She laughs when friends bring gifts of fragrances.
“Does perfume need perfume?” she asks.
They say, “Why do you not adorn yourself?”
She answers, “Any jewelry
Would dull my luster.
Did I not throw away my silver bangles
To keep myself from blinding them?”

Next, to assure the Israelis—who by now had blended invisibly into the packed audience—that they, too, had a role in the golden age of the Arabs, two poems were read about Jews, who in days of old had pandered to Muslims with forbidden pleasures.

Ind al-Yahudiyya

I went to Kutkebul laden with gold crowns,
Eighty dinars saved by my hard work.
In no time I had blown them like flies,
And pledged a good silk shirt,
A fancy robe, and my best suit
To the Jewess who runs the tavern.
No woman more modest, more gracious, more lovely!
“My beauty,” I said to her, “come, be a sport,
Give us a kiss and be done with it!”
“But why,” she replied, “do you want a woman's love
When a boy,
All dreamy-eyed and smooth as a gold coin,
Is so much better?”
She went and fetched a lissome lad,
Bright as the moon, fresh-bottomed—
But I, I left that place dead broke
And down on my luck.
And though, my shirt lost to her wine,
She said in parting,
“Now be well,”
I tell you that I felt like hell.

The Palestinians roared good-humoredly. The Israelis, prepared in the cause of peace to share the blame for a cunning Jewess who had lived twelve hundred years ago, tittered politely.

Ibn-Zaidoun now put on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and read, to the delight of the audience, another poem about a Jew.

Jitu Ma'a As'habi

I came with my friends, both fine young men,
To the tavern keeper at the hour of ten.
You could tell by his dress he was no Muslim.
Our intentions were good—I can't say that of him.
“Your religion,” we asked, “it's Christianity?”
He let loose a flood of profanity.
Well, that's a Jew: It's love to your face
And a knife in the back, anytime, anyplace.
“And what,” we asked, “shall we call you, sir?”
“Samuel,” he said. “Or else Abu-Amar.
Not that I like having an Arab name.
It certainly isn't a claim to fame.
Yet I prefer it all the same
To longer ones that aren't as plain.”
“Well said, Abu Amar!” we chimed.
“And now be a friend and break out the wine.”
He looked us up and he looked us down,
And he said, “I swear, if word gets out in this town,
Because of you, that I sell booze,
I wouldn't want to be in your shoes.”
And with that he brought us a golden mead
That knocked the three of us off our feet,
So that what was meant to be a weekender
Has lasted a month and we're still on a bender!